Heartfelt

(image from www.nlm.nih.gov medical encyclopedia)

Have you ever wondered why we can 'feel' with our hearts?

In a medical sense, surely our hearts are just organs, lumps of muscle that pump the blood, laden with waste carbon dioxide from the rest of the body, to our lungs, where the carbon dioxide is exchanged for life-giving oxygen and sent back to the heart, which pumps it back out to the other organs. It is a machine, an amazing feat of evolutional engineering, but with a clear and essential function.

Yet if this is all that a heart is, then why can we feel pain in our chests when we are sad, lightness there when we are glad?

Again, there is probably a medical explanation, the effects of chemicals synthesized in response to hormonal and neuronal signals in the brain, linking our emotional responses with physical symptoms. So this is how. But why? Fear, attraction, disgust, these are emotions that seem useful in terms of governing how we should react to situations, telling us what is safe and what is not. But why do we feel intense emotional pain, intense joy, intense love? And why in our hearts?

Or perhaps there is a psychological explanation. We are aware of the phrases 'heart-felt', 'heart-pain', 'heart-ease'. Maybe unconsciously we make a link between emotions and a physical presence for them in the cavity where the heart sits, and so our bodies and sensory centre respond accordingly? But the concept of the heart as a centre for emotion and feeling has appeared and reappeared in many different, separate, cultures over the course of millenia. Independently, different cultures have believed that the heart, not the brain, is the seat of our intelligence, and come to the conclusion that this is where our souls reside. The Aztecs cut out the hearts of human (and animal) sacrificial victims as offerings to the gods. Egyptians believed that our hearts would be the organ sitting in the balance at the judgement of the dead, and our sins would show up in the weight of our hearts. Different languages have different phrases that involve the heart.

And even before we were truly aware of the existing symbolism surrounding the heart, as children, did your heart really never 'sink into your boots' when you were disappointed, or have a 'heavy heart' when you were sad? I never truly believed before that you could really feel your heart break, or understood just how much pain you could feel in your heart.

Do you know why people who have kind and unsuspecting, giving, hearts seem to attract people? In this world of ours it seems almost easy to become cynical, to lose that ability to trust in someone else or something else. Barriers can be built around hearts, to protect them from attack and from injury. But hearts can atrophy, you can lose the ability to use them as more than just a mechanical pump. The shackles you build to protect your heart can feel heavy, and dull, as if they were truly weighing your heart down.

But having closed your heart, how do you learn to open it up again? Perhaps, if you have the answer, you could share it with me?

1st May elections

I nearly forgot to vote in the local elections today. I kept reminding myself that the elections were on the 1st May, but it was only after I got home after work that I remembered what it was I was supposed to do....

What annoys me most about the campaign tactics used is the amount of negative campaigning all the parties do. Instead of focusing on what they can actually achieve, the newsletters and flyers that come through my door are filled with why I SHOULDN'T vote for another party. For example, the Liberal Democrat flyer tells me that 'Labour and the Greens can't win' in Trumpington, whilst Labour tell me that there is 'disillusion' with the Lib Dem party. But they neglect to tell me why it is I should vote for THEM.

Actually, I have voted this year. If only because I believe that the UK political system is one of the fairest ones in the present world, and I am fortunate to know that my vote will be counted. It may not be a powerful or particularly influential voice, but it still has its part to play.

Defying the laws of probability

So I plate THIS number of seed lines onto selective media but only FOUR lines grow (the green plants are those growing on normal medium).

Not only that, but all four lines are different plant-transgene combinations, they don't even have the decency to be two lines of the same combo. So not useful for publication. AARGH

Surely this must be all against the laws of probability?

Though it only serves to confirm Murphy's law. Thus goes the story of my PhD (a rather thin but sorry looking pamplet).

Remembrance

This is a fairly well-known passage, although I don't recall the name of the writer. But these are the words I would want to say to people who remember me after I am gone, if they could hear me.

Death is nothing at all. I have only slipped away into the next room.

I am I and you are you. Whatever we were to each other that we still are.
Call me by my old familiar name, speak to me in the easy way you always used.

Put no difference in your tone, wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.
Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes we enjoyed together.

Play, smile, think of me. Pray for me.

Let my name be the household name it always was. Let it be spoken without the shadow of a ghost in it.

Life means all that it ever meant. It is the same as it ever was.
What is death but a negligible accident? Why should I be out of your mind because I am out of your sight?

All is well. Nothing is lost. One brief moment and all will be as it was before.

For my friends and loved ones who have already left before me. You are always by my side, lending me your strength.

Is happiness a choice?

I read a magazine article yesterday that debated whether or not you can 'choose' to be happy. The arguments for and against were very polarised, and as usual, I found myself agreeing with both and neither at the same time.

You might not be able to 'choose' to avoid situations and events that will make you unhappy - or rather you can, but you will not be actually happy if you have just opted to ignore the problems that won't go away. Self-delusion is normal and necessary for us to stay sane but there must be a limit to how far you can or should trick yourself. If you let it go too far you end up hurting both yourself and the people around you.

Happiness, or perhaps to say sadness, is something that depends greatly on events that happen in your life, when there is illness and bereavement and stress it's very hard to be happy. And understandable if you aren't happy. If you think about a large proportion of the world, there is so much to be UNhappy about, people who have to worry about food, shelter, political unrest, abuse, the list goes on. For those of us who are much more fortunate we worry about illness, work, money, family and friends. The issues may appear to be of different scales but that doesn't mean that these problems aren't just as REAL to each of us. Or, for that matter, that these problems aren't important.

So your own happiness is something that you have no control over? How depressing.

But I believe that to some extent you can make a choice. Not whether you are happy or not, because that feeling of joy bubbling up inside you is something that comes when you aren't thinking about it. But you can actively choose how to deal with problems, choose to some extent how far you let yourself become upset over a situation. As a simple example, many of my friends have been considering career changes recently. Some of them complain a lot about their current job and say how unhappy they are, but they focus so much on this negative side that they don't gather the energy to really look for a new job. They become depressed and easily discouraged by every set-back they encounter. Others have bitten the bullet and spent a lot of time on their applications and preparation for interviews, and kept going even when the rejection letters have kept coming back. The difference in energy and sense of purpose is so evident even when I've been on the other side of a telephone being updated by what has (or hasn't) been happening in their lives.

Although we cannot control events that happen around us, nor predict what may happen next, perhaps we can try and stay optimistic and look for the silver lining to keep us going. Although how easy or difficult it is to do this depends a lot on your personality, that doesn't mean that we can't change. Maybe instead of always striving for happiness, we should strive for contentment and satisfaction in what we can achieve, without being complacent. Then with a calm and welcoming heart we might be able to experience the streaks of colourful emotion that can strike every now and then, and with any luck might be true happiness.